Tales of Technical Cofounder

Jul 15, 2015

Many of us dream of building something big. Something we would deeply care
about. Something that would help us prove our craft to ourselves and others.
Something that would reach 1000-stars mark on Github or at least end with a huge
IPO.

Here’s my take.

I’ve done my fair share of starting and running a company. I remember the
enthusiasm of the very early stages and the burnout after many sleepless nights
of tireless bootstrapping. I know how important it is to have a great team and
how hard it is to build one with very little money available. I learned so much
about luck and hard work. After all this, I appreciate my wife more than ever —
we went from a couple with full-time jobs to a family of four, all this while I
was entertaining the role of a cofounder and working to pay my bills.

I wasn’t alone so I missed many areas of running the business. I did not meet
clients. I missed investor presentations. I was the less exposed technical
cofounder. The guy who is never in the spotlight because the database just went
down, laptop had to be pulled from the bag, and a fix had to be made. Sometimes
in the middle of a party.

It was great, but, on the other hand, I am really glad that it is over.

How did this all happen?

By accident.

My former boss and colleague was asking around if there’s anyone interested in
doing a quick weekend project. I enjoyed working with him, so one thing led to
another, and here we are, working days and nights, shipping a very compelling
MVP in less than 10 days.

Networking is important

Remember that your personal and professional networks are some of your biggest
assets. People need other people to make things happen and it is much better to
be in the middle of things. One day, you may find yourself looking for a
cofounder and it’s better to start with people you know and you can rely on than
with strangers. Even if you’re out of luck with your network then there’s always
a great chance that you will get other people recommended.

Trust me, I know how hard it is. I am an introvert, and I’d rather spent my time
with my family than talk to strangers. Just do it, even if it’s against your
nature, it’s time well spent.

Do what you know best!

This is probably the most important lesson for me. Doing what you know best is
not as exciting as trying new things, but you want your business to get off the
ground as quickly as possible, not applying for Extreme Olympics.

We, developers, really enjoy tinkering with new technologies. Programming
languages, frameworks, databases, editors and even browsers. You usually hear
from your colleagues — I have this new idea for [X] and I’m going to try [Y]
which looks so great! This is a good approach if you plan on having just a pet
project. but this might not be the perfect solution if you’re looking to start a
business. You want to deliver value not technology, so make sure that you keep
your technology stack boring and simple. Being the sole technical person on a
project makes your responsible not only for the exciting development. but also
you’ll be the first one to get a call that something is going wrong. Would you
rather deal with a very popular database with great community (like PostgreSQL
or MySQL) or something obscure that promises scaling to millions of users while
you’re still struggling to have your first customer pay?

Write tests. It doesn’t really matter if you BDD, TDD, or add a bunch of tests a
couple of weeks later. You would be surprised how important this turned out to
be. Many times I would have shipped badly broken site if I wasn’t testing most
important parts of the application. Users signing in, signing out, performing
simple actions — basically anything that builds your value has to be tested.
Once you start making money (be it cents, but still) every minute of downtime
has its price. If you go down for 30 minutes in your best time of the year this
really starts to mean something.

To bootstrap or not to bootstrap?

Having investors’ money to spend is everyone’s dream come true. Grab a new
laptop, comfy chair, height-adjustable desk, fancy office. But do you really
need this to run your business? Most likely not.

Bootstrap for as long as you can. Start your products, then try signing up some
users. Already there? Perhaps a first paying customer comes next. Great, another
one! All of a sudden, you’re making enough money to start hiring to grow your
business even more. Only then grab this new shiny Macbook Pro and Aeron chair.

Of course, bootstrapping is hard. It will require a lot of sacrifices. Not every
business can’t be bootstrapped, but it’s really worth it if it has a chance of
working out for your case. If you’re looking to sell your business then you
still have a full ownership which means a much better negotiating position. If
you want to keep it — well, you are free to decide which way to go, how to
invest the money, or maybe treat yourself to a little surprise. Or maybe just
shut your company down, sell everything and go for a 2-year long vacation in
Bahamas.

Team

One thing I truly regret is not having a bigger team. We were a perfect match
for product development. My cofounder has a great grasp of how people could use
the site, I took care of technical side of things. We really should have someone
business-focused since day one, bringing someone in two years into the business
was too late. We have missed so many opportunities to increase profitability, we
definitely could have made more money and show better financial data to our
investors.

Too bad I don’t have a life

You would think that running your own business and having a day job means that
your life will be only about work, work, and then some work?

This doesn’t have to be true.

In the three years of running Durszlak, my wife and I had 2 kids and we’ve
traveled quite a lot (yes, you can see a lot with kids!). We moved to a new
apartment.

You don’t need to switch your personal life off. You just need to focus, make
the most of your time. And keep in my mind that you can always push that code
tomorrow, but your kids will never be 2 years old again. You don’t want to miss
that.

You don’t need to be 18 to create a business. You can start much later. In fact
most likely you are more qualified to do that later in your life. You have
already learned a lot. You have a better idea of what to do and what to avoid.
You will be more focused, you will have less incentive to catch up with your
friends on Facebook, waste time on Twitter or play Angry Birds. You will have
something to come back to, whether it is your spouse, kids or your bridge club.

And you don’t necessarily need to be an entrepreneur to benefit from this. My
day job has also been different since I have learned to manage my time
efficiently. I am more focused, way much more productive and my skills have
become better.

Money!

Durszlak was a small thing. It eventually grew to be the biggest Polish culinary
website, but I think that we could have done better. I did get some exit money,
after all we sold it, but this was not a life-altering amount. However, I could
easily take a month off and travel so it was well worth it.

What should I do next?

New job? New business?

I was 32 when I was selling Durszlak and I already had a good idea about my
strengths and weaknesses. I’ve worked as a consultant, but I definitely prefer
working with a product. I would love to run my own business but on the other
having a job and being taken care of is what gives me a great sense of comfort
since I became a father.

I interviewed at just a bunch companies when I decided to join
Castle. Great team, exciting product, a well-defined
business model. Something I wanted to work on since I graduated university, some
of my research actually was in behavioral analytics. I am super happy where I
am, and I enjoy every minute.

Summary

Running a company was a great ride. I learned a lot, some technical stuff too,
but most of that was about being a boss of one, working with freelancers,
dealing with client requests, maintaining scalable and stable systems while
having a life.

If you can, you should give it a try, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work for
you.